Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
Pentecost 9
August 6, 2006
W. Gregory Pope
IS UNITY POSSIBLE?
Ephesians 4:1-16
I love today’s text. Over the past few months I have gained a renewed appreciation for the book of Ephesians as we have studied it through the lens of Christian Spiritual Formation. For the next six weeks we will be listening to the final three chapters.
These final three chapters talk about Christian Spiritual Formation in relation to others. That’s where Christian Spiritual Formation takes place - in relationship with others. Many Christians prefer to do Spiritual Formation alone, outside the community of faith, out on the lake, taking a hike through the woods, playing golf with friends. Of course, you’re going to feel more spiritual out there.
It’s much easier to be spiritual alone than trying to spiritual with a group of people who are different from you, some of them you may not really like all that much. And you can be spiritual alone if you want to be, but your can’t be Christian alone. We are only Christian as we are a part of the Body of Christ, engaging others in ministry and worship and formation in the way of Jesus.
A church is perhaps the most disappointing group of people in the world because the expectations are so high. We expect to find the finest people in society in the church. But that’s not the case. The church is full of sinners. And to tell the world we are something other than that is to set up false expectations.
We need to make it clear that we’re not gathered just to relax and enjoy ourselves. We’ve gathered to walk together in the way of Jesus and to live the gospel out in the world and to embody for our world a unity in the midst of our differences.
We were taught earlier in the second chapter of Ephesians that as far as God is concerned, the barriers to unity have been torn down by Christ. God does not give attention to national boundaries or ethnic differences or any other classes or divisions we use to distinguish people from one another.
As a church full of sinners, today’s text guides us as we seek to live into that reality, calling us to live in unity. I think it also has a word to say to the disunity of the world. Is unity even possible in the world?
I don’t know about you, but the news about Iraq and Israel and Lebanon create this heavy weight inside of me, wondering what is going to be come of it all. The part that sickens me most is the excitement some Christians have about the recent fighting in Israel, believing it will bring about Armageddon, the return of Jesus, and the end of the world. It is bad theology that leads to bad politics. It is all so very sad. And no one, America or Iraq, Israel or Lebanon, is innocent.
As Christians, living in this world of ours, we are faced with a choice: We can do nothing about our world’s violent divisions and bury ourselves in cynical despair, or we can do as our text this morning says and with great courage “live a life worthy of our calling” - a calling to follow Jesus, a calling rooted in hope that his difficult cruciform way of love and peace is wiser than the arrogant, destructive way of violence and hatred. It is a calling to do all that we can to live in unity with each other.
There is a wonderful ministry of Reconciliation happening in our city. Back in June there was a Reconciliation conference that our youth and others from our congregation attended. It focuses on race, a crucial point of need for reconciliation. I would like for us to get involved more fully and perhaps expand the ways in which reconciliation can happen.
It is a hard calling in the world and in the church. As the church we have been given the ministry of reconciliation. Our task is to be a witness and teacher to the world of how to get along with each other and live in unity. In order to do that we as a community of faith have to live together in unity.
How can we do it? What is it that makes for unity? What is it that unites Crescent Hill Baptist Church?
I have been with you now for almost eighteen months. I can honestly say it has taken me that long to get a good sense of who you are. And I’m still learning.
Though racially and ethnically you are not that diverse, you are quite diverse theologically. Diversity, I think, is to be celebrated. God made us all differently, and we have much to learn from one another. Diversity, however, does not come without its challenges.
As a congregation we live in the murky waters of moderation. In the Baptist world we call ourselves “moderates,” meaning we live in the middle. Nothing too inspiring about that. Though I think we are more progressive than most moderate Baptist churches, the difficulty with living as moderates is that we are called by a radically conservative and disturbingly liberal gospel that transcends the meaning of all labels. The danger of living as moderates is the refusal to have a shared identity of conviction, vision, mission, or purpose that inspires and gives focus to our life together.
When I ask myself, “What mission, what vision, what sense of identity unites Crescent Hill Baptist Church?” I am not quite sure how to answer. What would you say? What are we trying to be and do? What is our mission? What is our vision?
There’s a saying around this place that if you in the 30th percentile on a given subject you are in the majority. It’s mostly true. The diversity of beliefs is widespread.
Take Communion for example. One-third of you would prefer to always receive Communion seated in your pew. One-third of you would prefer to always come to the front. The other one-third of you likes doing both. The one-third rule. I can tell you it makes preaching and leadership quite a challenge.
As a progressive congregation, we pride ourselves on our diversity. And yet, I see us hesitant to share our diversity. We’re afraid we’ll make someone mad.
As much as we pride ourselves on diversity, the truth is we have a difficult time accepting those with whom we disagree. It’s human nature. We want to say, “Your different opinion is welcome here.” But we say it through clenched teeth.
How can we go about disagreeing in this place, maintain our unity, and teach the world to live together in peace?
Our text offers help.
1. We begin with humility. We hold our convictions and share our beliefs with the understanding that we could be wrong and that we just might learn something from others who believe differently. Humility.
2. We speak with gentleness. We are under control when we relate to each other, the control of the Holy Spirit. We drop all arrogance when we speak to one another.
3. We live with each other in patience, realizing we all need room to grow, and that things happen slowly in a church.
4. We bear with one another in love. Our world tells us that safety and security are most important, so we must live with suspicion and fear of all who are unlike us. The way of Jesus says that love casts out fear, that we risk safety and security to love one another, friends and enemies alike. Uniformity of belief and ideology will not make the church or the world a peaceful place. The courage to love must be central. It is our only hope.
5. And we make every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. This calls for making sure we focus only on the things that matter. The complaints that fracture relationships in the church are often about things that don’t really matter. Complaints usually focus on the things we do not personally like. Well the church is not about making everybody happy. The church is about ministry to those who are hurting and in need. And when we fail to do that, that’s when we should complain. Jesus calls us into community not to satisfy our personal needs, but so that we might learn to live together in peace and unity, and teach the world to do the same. So let us make every effort to do so. Let the body of Christ come first.
6. And let each of us do all that we can to build up the body of Christ, sharing our gifts and resources, as we have been given them and called to use them by the Spirit. More on gifts and calling next week.
Humility. Gentleness. Patience. Bearing with one another in love. Making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit. These are some ways in which we live together in unity even when we don’t agree.
But what are the things that unite us as Crescent Hill Baptist Church? I can think of at least three:
1. For one thing, we pursue a thinking faith. We take seriously the call to love God with our minds. And it is a gift we offer those who need room to explore faith without checking their brains at the door.
2. Secondly, we possess a desire to do something. There is a feeling that we’ve been just thinking about our faith for too long. And though our congregation has been active in ministry in many ways, I sense a growing fire within us to do something of significance in our community and other places. Let’s make sure that desire doesn’t lose its fire.
3. Third, we want to be strengthened in our commitment to walk in the way of Jesus. We don’t all believe the same things about Jesus and other points of doctrine, but the way of Jesus draws us and we long to allow the way of Jesus to profoundly shape our lives.
What would you add to the things that unite us?
I want to give you the task this month of thinking about what unites us. On Wednesday, August 30, 500 days before our church’s 100th birthday, we will have a sermon talk-back, engaging in dialogue about these issues.
Between now and August 30, I want you also to consider a proposal that we as a congregation prayerfully and thoughtfully shape a new Church Covenant together. Covenant is the way in which God related with Israel throughout biblical history. And I think we could benefit from shaping our own covenant with God and one another, laying out the convictions that bind us together and the conduct in which we will engage based on those convictions. In this congregation, those convictions will be broad and the conduct non-judgmental. But I sense the need for a covenant that says who we are upon which our ministry and mission can be based. Sometimes we fail to agree on a certain course of action because we do not agree on the principle upon which it is based. This covenant will not be a measure of inclusion or exclusion, but will serve as a guide in our life together.
If we do decide to form a new covenant, I say we work to have it in place by our Centennial on January 12, 2008. Think about it. Pray about it. And let us discern together. What is it that unites us? What is it that holds us together?
The story is told of a man had a pile of bricks. He measured each brick - how long, how wide, how deep it was. He threw a bunch of good-looking bricks out saying, “I’ve got to get them all exactly the same. I’m building a church and I want it to stand.” Some people think that the way to build a church is to gather people who are from the same economic, social, and educational background, who all believe the same thing, because then they’ll stick together. The man stacked the bricks, all just alike, but the bricks fell down.
Around the corner there was a man with a pile of rocks. You’ve never seen such a mess - no two of them alike, round ones, dark ones, small ones, and big ones. He said, “I’m building a church that’s going to stand.” He went over to a wooden tray, took something like a hoe, and began to stir something back and forth. It looked like cement, but that’s not what he called it. He put healthy doses of it between the stones. That church is still standing. The stuff in between held it together. He called it “Spirit of God.” (Fred Craddock, Craddock Stories, Chalice Press, 2001, 148-149)
Paul argued that if there is one God, then there must be:
one body - one church into which everyone is invited
one spirit - which unites us
one hope - which gives us courage
one baptism - which knits us together as one
and one God - above all and through all and in all.
Radical unity. Our world needs it more than ever. So let it begin with us. Let it begin in us as we gather around the Table of the Lord where all are welcome and all are one.
(AT THE TABLE) When Jesus gathered with his disciples the night before he died, he took the bread and cup, and said, “This is the new covenant.” Covenant was a special word to the followers of Jesus. Since Noah and Abraham, Jacob and David, God has been establishing covenants with Israel. Jesus came to bring a new covenant from God, a covenant with no barriers, a covenant into which all our invited. Let us pray.
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CRESCENT HILL BAPTIST CHURCH
2800 Frankfort Avenue
Louisville, Kentucky 40206
(502) 896-4425
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